Session Topic: Optimization in Retail: Bringing Innovation to Users that are Not Early Adopters

Some retailers are known for their successful use of innovative technology like Best Buy and Zara. Logistics and supply chain departments have eagerly adopted optimization technology to improve their warehouse and transportation operations, inventory levels and service. Yet optimization solutions have failed to penetrate line-of-business departments, human resources, or middle and top management by having failed to show them the value they could get. We will share our experience deploying optimization solutions for these departments in the Retail industry.

We look forward to your participation.Please contact Kitte Knight atkknight@us.ibm.comfor an invitation to this Webinar.

One of the challenges of large Container Terminals is to smoothly coordinate Quay-side and Yard-side operations during the container load/discharge process. Taking advantage of the IBM Optimization platform and technology, DecisionBrain (www.decisionbrain.com) successfully implemented an innovative decision support solution to help one of the largest Container Terminals worldwide to closely coordinate operations and reduce Yard Clashes. In this presentation we share the key ingredients of this successful implementation: project approach, solution architecture, technical approach and best practices.

We look forward to your participation.Please contact Kitte Knight atkknight@us.ibm.comfor an invitation to this Webinar.

Last year an overview on CP Optimizer was provided by Paul Shaw at the Virtual Users Group forum. In the upcoming session, we will follow-up on the original topic and focus on using CP Optimizer to address scheduling problems. We will initially cover modeling concepts related with scheduling in CP Optimizer. Using examples we will then provide details on tools, functionalities and tips for speeding-up the development of your scheduling models and improving their efficiency.

We look forward to your participation.Please contact Kitte Knight atkknight@us.ibm.comfor an invitation to this Webinar.

The OPL modeling language provides a compact and straightforward code that is much easier to maintain than general-purpose programming languages (C++, Java, etc.). However a common concern as with any descriptive modeling languages is that the savings in development time may come at the cost of excessive computing overhead (memory consumption, increased run-time). Proper design is key to produce an efficient model that will scale to solve large model instances. This presentation mainly describes best practices and techniques to compress models and data so that the run-time performance and memory consumption of OPL applications are efficient.

We look forward to your participation.Please contact Kitte Knight atkknight@us.ibm.comfor an invitation to this Webinar.

A new release of IBM Decision Optimization Center became available on March 14. In this presentation, you will learn about the new features and performance enhancements, including:

Performance and scalability: Lower latency in the business user interface improves the user experience when working with large data sets.

Rapid and flexible application development: Scripting reduces the time and effort required to customize data models and views.

Effective business interface: User roles and rights support organizational business processes. Enhanced Gantt charts enable business users to move activities within a schedule interactively in real time.

Traditionally the fashion industry has relied heavily on human instinct for decision-making. Fashion industry nuances like high volatility of demand, combined with strong interdependencies among sizes and products, renders standard retail distribution algorithms unusable. Current retail technologies force store owners to simplify ordering within a min-max standard retail algorithm, and limit the ability to add necessary industry “tricks” to strategic ordering. Some time ago, one of the worlds biggest fashion retailers, together with MIT, invested in applying analytics to this sector. Based on the investigations, DECIDE, together with the mStore-Operations has developed data and optimization models that helps the fashion industry optimize their replenishment process. In this presentation we will share the business and technical approach of this solution.

IBM Decision Optimization Virtual User Group Meetings provide you with updated and useful information about our products and how you can get the best value for your organization from our optimization technology and solutions.

These meetings are being held electronically with presentations by our product management and development subject matter experts. The sessions will run for approximately one hour, with about 45 minutes of presentation material and 15 minutes for open questions and answers. Our goal is to provide a forum for you to:

make smarter decisions

get your questions answered

elicit your feedback on various topics.

We look forward to your participation.Please contact Kitte Knight atkknight@us.ibm.comfor an invitation to this Webinar.

Reorganization of CPLEX Optimizer parameters into a functional hierarchy

New code assist functionalities in the IDE that help in correctly writing constraints and related structures

An LP-format viewer in the IDE to aid in model debugging

IBM Decision Optimization Virtual User Group Meetings provide you with updated and useful information about our products and how you can get the best value for your organization from our optimization technology and solutions.

These meetings are being held electronically with presentations by our product management and development subject matter experts. The sessions will run for approximately one hour, with about 45 minutes of presentation material and 15 minutes for open questions and answers. Our goal is to provide a forum for you to:

make smarter decisions

get your questions answered

elicit your feedback on various topics.

We look forward to your participation.Please contact Kitte Knight atkknight@us.ibm.comfor an invitation to this Webinar.

Session Topic: Unlocking the Power of the CPLEX Optimization Studio IDE

This presentation will focus on features of CPLEX Optimization Studio IDE that enable users to accelerate their model development cycle. Tips and tricks related to editing models, viewing results, debugging, writing custom scripting code, and profiling will be shared. The session will include demo of creating an optimization problem though the IDE and using it to explore various capabilities in debugging support including

New code assist functionalities that help in correctly writing constraints and related structures

IBM Decision Optimization Virtual User Group Meetings provide you with updated and useful information about our products and how you can get the best value for your organization from our optimization technology and solutions.

These meetings are being held electronically with presentations by our product management and development subject matter experts. The sessions will run for approximately one hour, with about 45 minutes of presentation material and 15 minutes for open questions and answers. Our goal is to provide a forum for you to:

make smarter decisions

get your questions answered

elicit your feedback on various topics.

We look forward to your participation.Please contact Kitte Knight atkknight@us.ibm.comfor an invitation to this Webinar.

This presentation will help in understanding the different application deployment possibilities using IBM Decision Optimization tools: CPLEX Optimization Studio and ODM Enterprise. We will go through available functionalities to embed optimization components in enterprise applications as well as explore functionalities that enable rapid application development. These will include graphical views of data, solutions and alternatives and a tour of the approaches and technical options for specific optimization application objectives, requirements and IT development environments.

IBM ILOG Optimization Virtual User Group Meetings provide you with updated and useful information about our products and how you can get the best value for your organization from our optimization technology and solutions.

These meetings are being held electronically with presentations by our product management and development subject matter experts. The sessions will run for approximately one hour, with about 45 minutes of presentation material and 15 minutes for open questions and answers. Our goal is to provide a forum for you to:

make smarter decisions

get your questions answered

elicit your feedback on various topics.

We look forward to your participation.Please contact Kitte Knight atkknight@us.ibm.comfor an invitation to this Webinar.

IBM ILOG Optimization Virtual User Group Meetings provide you with updated and useful information about our products and how you can get the best value for your organization from our optimization technology and solutions.

These meetings are being held electronically with presentations by our product management and development subject matter experts. The sessions will run for approximately one hour, with about 45 minutes of presentation material and 15 minutes for open questions and answers. Our goal is to provide a forum for you to:

make smarter decisions

get your questions answered

elicit your feedback on various topics.

We look forward to your participation.Please contact Kitte Knight atkknight@us.ibm.comfor an invitation to this Webinar.

Remote objects allow users to create CPLEX objects on remote computers and use them transparently as if stored on local computer. Local applications using remote object functionality can not only benefit from performance increases in version 12.5.1 but also exploit more powerful remote hardware.

IBM ILOG Optimization Virtual User Group Meetings provide you with updated and useful information about our products and how you can get the best value for your organization from our optimization technology and solutions. These meetings are being held electronically with presentations by our product management and development subject matter experts. The sessions will run for approximately one hour, with about 45 minutes of presentation material and 15 minutes for open questions and answers.

Our goal is to provide a forum for you to:

Make smarter decisions

Get your questions answered

Elicit your feedback on various topics

We look forward to your participation. Please contact Kitte Knight at kknight@us.ibm.com for an invitation to this Webinar.

If you’ve ever tried to build an application that business decision
makers can use, you know that having a good model of the system you want to manage
isn’t enough. And while you need the best optimization solving technology, line-of-business
managers and executives demand more. They want to see the data supporting the
decisions, they want to try what-if scenarios to validate the proposed options,
and they want planners and schedulers to collaborate across the corporate
organizational lines. And if you want to deploy your solution, you need to
satisfy a bunch of requirements and standards from your IT department.

The Design Guide addresses these issues with concrete
guidance and practical examples derived from IBM’s long experience developing
and deploying analytical decision support solutions in many organizations.
Going beyond how to formulate good models, the Guide shows you how to design
data integration, business user interfaces, client/server architectures, taking
advantage of IBM’s ODM Enterprise to streamline development. The Guide
illustrates the steps using a concrete example derived from a real-world
logistics application. Plus the Guide explores two detailed case studies, one
in manufacturing and the other from insurance.

Need to convince your management that optimization can work
for your organization? The Design Guide can give you the credibility you
need.

As banks and financial institutions start to emerge from a prolonged financial downturn, they face a host of challenges. Disruptive forces continue to ripple through the finance industry changing the market and impacting the businesses, such as:

• New regulations• New capital requirements

• New technologies

Optimisation technologies have become key tools in making important business decisions that increase competitive advantage. Optimisation, through the use of advanced mathematics and computer science techniques, is used to assist organisations with solving their complex business problems. The models which capture trade-off between optimum resource allocation and risk minimisation are gaining increasing importance in Banking, Portfolio Construction, Asset and Liability Management, Trade Settlement and Clearing and Cash Management. Recent developments and growing applications of quadratic optimisation, stochastic optimisation and robust optimisation in these domains and the role of modelling systems and solvers will be presented and discussed.

BENEFITS OF ATTENDING:

Understand the role of optimisation in financial analytics and gain an understanding of the leading issues of financial analyticsLearn about the latest thinking and practices in the domain of Portfolio Optimisation and Asset and Liability ManagementLearn how companies have been able to use optimisation technology to help determine how to most effectively allocate capital, balance business risks, uncover novel solutions for their customers and gain insights into their toughest challenges for maximum return with limited risk

A new case study is available showing how Südzucker, Europe's leading supplier of sugar products with an annual revenue of approximately €7 billion, uses IBM ILOG LogicNet Plus to help meet their goals of a cost-effective and flexible supply chain:

Here is a quick summary of the case:

"When the European Union adopted a new market regulation for the sugar industry in 2006, Südzucker was forced to re-evaluate their entire supply chain network. On the one hand the company’s ability to export sugar to world markets became very limited, on the other hand major sugar deficit areas within the European Union were created. This led to a much greater focus on sales and distribution. Südzucker also knew this ruling would give them the ability to enter new sugar markets like Greece, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom. Their challenge was to merge their national supply chain networks to create one integrated and powerful European supply chain network. The company had to determine how to modify their supply chain network by adding new facilities to ensure excellent service but also minimize transportation costs."

A new case study is available highlighting how Johnson Controls uses LogicNet Plus to model and improve their closed-loop battery supply chain.

The following is a quote from Johnson Control's Supply Chain Network Strategy Manager, Chad Montgomery:

"I’m using LNP XE every week to perform modeling on a variety of projects from small capacity analysis/capital investment decisions to quarterly financial forecasting and annual budgeting for capacity utilization, plant manufacturing, and shipping territories. LNP XE has allowed us to create clear pictures of our network, starting with a best-case utopia state and then quantifying the impact of each constraint. This clarity can reveal hidden savings opportunities as well as gives complete insight into the main drivers of our supply chain”